How To Create Flix In A Flash With Flixtime

Flixtime is a service in direct competition with Animoto for helping you easily create awesome videos from your photos. Animoto has definitely dominated in this niche, also branching out into creating greeting cards and full-length videos. There have been a few other services that have tried to take some of Animoto’s shine, but have been unable to do so. With their simple, yet powerful interface and fast rendering time, Flixtime might actually be a contender.

Adding Visuals

Flixtime videos can be up to 60-seconds long while Animoto limits free users to 30-second clips. You can include photos and video to spice things up. To have the most impact, you should include a mix of photos along with short videos. You cannot control the transitions and effects used between scenes. You can only choose which clips or photos to “highlight.” You also have the option to create a cover photo, which is just an image that will help you tell your videos apart.

To create your own video, the first step is to add a name, description, and a resolution. Choices for resolution include MP4, DivX, H264, and FLV at 640×360 and MP4 iPod at 320×240. Once you’ve got the basics in place, you’ll want to add some photos and/or videos. You can either upload these from your computer, or pick from the Media Lounge (powered by Fotolia). You can also choose to add a text slide, which opens up the possibilities for what you can use the video for. You can choose to highlight or emphasize any individual slide by opening it’s properties menu (the symbol in the top-right corner).

Adding Audio

What good is a video without background music? Upload your own music or pic from the Music Lounge (powered by AudioMicro). When I say you have a gang of music of choose from, I’m not joking. I didn’t even bother with a screenshot here because there are so many options. You can choose from 17 categories, from Hip-Hop “Bootay Bootay” music (yes, actual name of clip) to Country. Choose whatever you want, but if you want your video to be used on TV, in video games, or in theaters, you will need to purchase additional licensing from AudioMicro.

Rendering Your Video

This is the easy part. You’ve already picked all the videos and stills you want in the video. You’ve organized them, placing them in the proper order and choosing which visuals should be highlighted during the video. Where necessary, you have added text slides to clarify, caption, credit, and describe. You’ve also picked some slamming background music. All you have to do now is wait for your video to be rendered. If you have better things to do with your life, remember that Flixtime will shoot you an email when your video is done cooking.

Sharing Your Video

By integrating AddThis, Flixtime has made it simple for even the most novice user to get their video where they want it. Pick from over 225 services to shoot your video out to, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. If you still don’t see the option you need, you can always use ‘email the video to a friend’ or ‘other service of choice’ (post@posterous.com, for instance). If you’ve created this video to be used as part of a longer video, maybe as the intro for your vlog, you can just download the video to incorporate it into future projects.

Final Thoughts

I’m not sure if it’s the interface itself or the fact that I can make full 60-second videos, but Flixtime has definitely caught my eye and I plan to use it for a few projects I’m working on. They are still in beta, so it remains to be seen what types of limitations we might see on free accounts in the future and what limitations might be removed (you can currently have 60 media files and videos are limited to 10 seconds, for instance). If you’re looking to throw a video together from some random clips and photos, check out Flixtime and tell us how it goes.

About the Author
Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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